Zeenews Bureau
Geneva: Physicists have announced on Wednesday that the subatomic particle discovered at CERN last year looked like a basic Higgs boson rather than any "super-Higgs".
Physicist Brian Petersen of Atlas, one of two research teams working in parallel on the Higgs project at CERN in Switzerland, was quoted saying to a new agency "It does look like the SM (Standard Model) Higgs boson”. But CERN has yet to confirm that.
A statement on the CERN website said the new scientists announced last week “that the new particle discovered at CERN last year is looking more and more like a Higgs boson. However, more analysis is still required before a definitive statement can be made.”
“Finding out what kind of Higgs it is will rely on carefully measuring the particle’s interactions with other particles, and that may take several years to resolve,” the statement said.
It has been assumed since the exultant announcement last June that a new particle spotted at CERNS's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was the Higgs boson, which is the missing piece of the puzzle in the Standard Model of physics, and is crucial to understanding why particles have the masses they do.
If confirmed on Thursday, it would mean LHC scientists will have to wait until late in this decade for any sign of "new worlds of physics".
The LHC closed down last month for two years of work that will double its power, and, it is hoped, the reach of its detectors.
(With Agency inputs)
First Published: Thursday, March 14, 2013, 09:33